The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is about the year after the death of her husband. As she walks her way through this year of grieving, she occupies her mind with what she did the year before when her husband was still alive, thereby kind of putting off the actual grieving.
I kinda do this with Paris.
I waltz through my photo library and look at what I was doing last year at this time. Like on this day a year ago I walked down Île Saint-Louis in search of Christmasy Paris scenes I could turn into a Christmas card.
Of course the card didn't happen.
Because my pattern with photography was to spend an inordinate amount of time walking and shooting photos, then doing nothing with them.
in-or-di-nate
adj.adjective
Exceeding reasonable limits; immoderate.
Not regulated; disorderly.
Once I had exceeded reasonable limits, I returned home with aching feet and dinner on my mind, forgetting all about the photos I had taken, barely even remembering to import them into my computer.Now that I've whisked myself away from Paris, I've been sifting through the photos and coming up with new projects. I'll be sharing them here in 2015. Back in Paris I felt mildly guilty about not doing something with my photos. Now I realize my time in Paris was the season of collecting and now is my season of editing.
It's like getting postcards from my past.
So if you ever feel like a failure for not completing a project, consider the possibility that you may have completed the first part of a project and the second part is meant to be done later.
A procrastinators dream? Not exactly.
You still need to get that niggly list of To-Dos out of your brain and into the world. Action is still required.Now I'm glad I took a slew of photos in Paris rather than taking and editing a few. I've got this big bucket of editing fun ahead of me now that I am not doing six hour urban hikes in Paris.
2015 will be my year of magical thinking.
While I'm watching the snow fall outside my windows this winter in Canada, I'll also be walking back through time, paying visits to the streets I've strolled in Paris, and perhaps by the end of 2015 I will have finally printed that Christmas card.
